Organising the Unorganised

Why is mall concept so popular?

Why folks prefer departmental stores over local kirana shop?
Why is online shopping on a rise?
Reasons are pretty simple…….
It is a one stop shop for people’s needs.
It is convenient and safe.
User experience is amazing
Do you think there is a need for an HR marketplace? We are scattered; We (HR Managers) need to do a lot of research prior to buying one product or service;  We need whatever we are buying to be tried and tested….there is no guarantee for the products or services bought,  not sure of return or exchange………….Yessssss, please can we have an HR marketplace!

I was speaking to one of my clients who are a high tech company based in Bangalore and she was sharing her woes saying that “We are constantly living in the fear if a particular training program is going to meet its objectives? Are our internal customers going to be happy? Not sure! Who will try and test it, who will guarantee the delivery? What happens if the training fails?”  It is such a real problem glaring on the faces of HR heads. They cross their fingers throughout the session….living in absolute uncertainty……..worried about business feedback; trainee feedback; objectives to be achieved.
It is a very common issue where HR teams are shrinking in numbers and organisations are having generalists than specialists. Organisations prefer recruiting folks who have worked across the spectrum of HR who can do a diagnostic role and refer a specialist for solutions. Everything cannot be solution’ed by internal teams. They need experts on the field to work on it, who has done it prior.
HR managers then activate their networks or google to get the expert. It is time consuming with no guarantee of quality. In this scenario, an HR manager’s best bet is a one stop shop….an HR marketplace.
Taking a cue from the needs and looking at the current trend Kelp came up with this unique concept of HR marketplace. ‘Buyers meet sellers’ – a very unique tag line of OLX.com. Can HR have such a platform? Yes we can and we are having one at www.kelphr.com, which will service this requirement. The corporates and the HR service providers will be provided a platform to transact. It could be learning needs, training, coaching, HR consulting, Surveys etc.
The concept is very new and views from our internal circle is fabulous. Our beta launch got many eyeballs and around 15 odd clients started engaging with us. We have around 150 odd professionals who think it is the best way to approach the market.
So the future of HR is an HR market place! Works seamlessly and is a response to all the above questions….it is a one stop shop; it is convenient and safe, we guarantee service, user experience is ought to be Wow! Nothing less 🙂
 
Head-in-the-clouds but feet-on-the-ground employee engagement
OK folks, it is time to give the ‘good feel’ fella called employee engagement serious shape. How does this sound?
High engagement workplaces have a

• 63% difference in shareholder return
• 50% higher sales
• 56% higher customer loyalty
• 38% above average productivity
• 27% higher profits

Are you kidding, do I hear you ask? Let me ask you back. If Gallup, Hewitt or Towers Watson told you this, would you believe it better? The fact is this. The figures above come from a combined survey by all three of them!
Now that credentials are established, let us look at busting the biggest myth about employee engagement strategies and practices. Which proclaims that an organization must offer higher incentives to increase employee engagement.
The carrot-or-stick approach over-justifies incentivization and actually destroys an employee’s intrinsic motivation to perform. In many cases, the act itself is the cause of engagement, the driving force that enables employees to innovate, execute with excellence and exceed personal limits. Set a limiting price on this, and you limit his will to perform and his level of engagement.
Here is another interesting statistic. A Globoforce survey showed that 60% of employees look for employment elsewhere when they feel undervalued. And this reduces to 20% when employees feel appreciated! Lesson to be learnt? Move away from unemotional, transactional and top-down reward and award programs.  No more of the milestone catalog gifts. How about making it social and emotional? Publicly appreciated?  Applauded by peers? Awards tied to organization culture and values?  Allows personal choice in the reward type?
Let us go back to basics. Anything that excites, promotes confidence and encourages self-motivation works like wildfire in blazing employee engagement. Three simple attributes of an employee engagement strategy can do the trick.
The first is placing freedom in the employees’ hands in the spheres of their work and accountability. The responsible creativity that bubbles up by opening this window of autonomy can be mind-boggling. Not to mention the multiplying effect of its healthy happiness for both the employee and the organization! Google’s incentive strategy of ‘20 per cent time’ allows its employees to devote just that extent of their time at work to whatever projects they want to work on. Similarly Altassin’s initiative of what they call ‘FedEx Days’ allocates one day a quarter for their employees to do whatever they want. At the end of the day, they gather to share what they have created. Cool, don’t you think?
The second concentrates on stroking positive psychology rather than highlighting what not to do, or what will not work. Most incentives are assassins of employee engagement, creating as they do (mostly by design), unattainable goals that leave employees frustrated in striving to meet them. By celebrating values and behavior that enhance the stated corporate culture, employees can be made more engaged, productive, and successful. Performance can then be kept separately to the high standards that are required for business to be successful.
The third is a wee bit wild, but grounded on a well-founded theory of psychology. It is allowing fluid intelligence to triumph over crystal intelligence. Simply put, it is promoting the skill to problem-solve in new situations rather than merely appreciating the ability to perform what one already knows how to do. Gamified initiatives in employee engagement can appeal to an employee’s will to succeed. Just as moving to the next level or ranking higher on the leaderboard drives game enthusiasts, this could well unlock their potential to think more creatively and feel more engaged.
Employee engagement is an endurance effort that lasts the entire lifespan of an organization. If promoted with genuine sincerity, a simple truth emerges. Engaged employees are more successful than successful employees being more engaged!
Transition from campus to corporate
A fresher in transition from campus to corporate has a big challenge to adapt to the change, their travel is from assignments and semesters to team work and deadlines.
Student-life is mostly care-free, typically students live their own timings, bunk classes, skip lessons and still make their grades.
Their professors are focused on enhancing learning quotient and look at improving their subject matter understanding; they evaluate them on their overall learning ability and implementation to a certain extent.
However, in an organisational setting, one is not only expected to be on time, attend meetings, take decisions, but also understand team based working in order to deliver on time within acceptable quality.
From a manager’s perspective, there is a constant pressure to deliver and meet deadlines using existing and derived knowledge.
This change requires an understanding of

• realities in a corporate environment
• required attitude
• success goals
• importance of learning as a continuous exercise over earning
• excellence
• ownership
• creativity and innovation
• initiatives to solve problems,
• responsibility
• conflicts
• failures as feedbacks
• health
• work life balance
• internal motivation to overcome internal interference like self doubt, limiting beliefs, negative memories

Wherever one comes from, at entry level, all freshers are lined up at a common starting point and their growth depends on their attitude, skill and performance.
For the corporate, a highly internally motivated long term performing and learning individuals will take the organisation to greater heights, as a team.